Many expect Departing to be paddock-mate Orb's biggest obstacle in Triple Crown quest

BALTIMORE — They likely won't recognize each other Saturday as they go to the gate for the 138th Preakness.

Orb, the Kentucky Derby winner, and Illinois Derby-winner Departing, a horse some believe could be the only one capable of ending this year's Triple Crown chase in Baltimore, will be thinking of nothing but running. They will be two of nine horses trying to get to the front.

Before they ever officially became racehorses, they were just two of eight horses in a field on the Kentucky farm where they were born. Shortly after being weaned from their mothers, they were given their own paddock to roam at bucolic Claiborne Farm outside of Lexington, Ky.

More than 25,000 foals were registered with the Jockey Club in 2010. Not even 400 were nominated for the Triple Crown races as 3-year-olds this year.

"Our owners have great mares and breed them to top stallions," said Bradley Purcell, a lifetime resident of the farm who recently became its manager. "But to have this situation, where two babies were together like that and now running in a Triple Crown race? Not something we usually think can happen."

Starting in September 2010, the horses were led to a 30-acre plot of land at about 1:30 p.m. each day, with nothing to do but run and sleep until the next morning.

"We just put them out there and let them be horses," Purcell said. "It's not much more complicated than that."

Claiborne actually still owns Departing, along with Adele Dilschneider, and will face two of its most prestigious clients, Orb co-owners Stuart Janney III and Ogden Mills "Dinny" Phipps, on Saturday.

Janney marvels at the thought that Orb's old running mate would show up here, in his hometown, looking to spoil a shot to go onto the Belmont with a chance for the first Triple Crown since 1978. He visited the young colt who eventually would be called Orb, but never noticed Departing.

"It's very unusual to think they both would make it here, over such a cluttered path," he said.

Neither horse had an especially noteworthy pedigree, at least by Claiborne breeding standards.

Orb's sire, Malibu Moon, had produced top fillies but his sons tended to be unfocused.

"He was like a lot of his half-brothers, goofing off instead of paying any attention," said Niall Brennan, who broke Orb at his Florida farm. "That had been the one worry with Malibu Moon. His fillies were professional, his colts not so much."

His dam, Lady Liberty, had failed to produce a great runner and Janney was under pressure from Phipps to sell her.

Departing's sire, War Front, had won four of his 13 starts and was top-three in 10 races, but was an untested sire. His dam ran in only one race.

Purcell remembers both colts showing early promise, however fleeting that usually turns out to be.

"New foals can be hard to look at," he said. "It's all legs and nothing is sorted out. But Orb was Lady Liberty's fourth foal and easily her best. He looked like a good horse right away. Departing wasn't much different."

Orb was born Feb. 24. Departing came on April 1.

Purcell doesn't remember specifics about how the horses may have interacted — the farm has about 150 foals born each year — but said small groups assigned to each field inevitably run together. They did that right through January 1, 2011, when they became yearlings and allowed their owners to begin really planning for their racing futures. They left Kentucky that summer, Departing for South Carolina and Orb to Brennan's farm in Ocala.

Orb at first lived up to the reputation established by the other sons of his father, Malibu Moon, seeming nervous or disinterested. He often was trained with another Malibu Moon colt named Heat Press, who is owned by Maryland's Sagamore Farm and scheduled to race on the Preakness undercard. Together, they began to break from troubling habits.

Departing, meanwhile, was delivered to trainer Al Stall Jr. in the second batch of 2-year-olds last summer, meaning the gelding already was behind some of his peers. Departing didn't race until Dec. 22, winning a six-furlong race at Fair Grounds. Even a victory in his next start, an allowance on the same track, didn't convince Stall to push for the Kentucky Derby.

Hancock, like Janney and Phipps, has been cautious about running his 3-year-olds in the crowded Derby field because he is afraid the wear prevents them from fulfilling their potential.

So when Departing finished third in the Louisiana Derby — a respectable enough finish to consider pointing toward the Kentucky Derby — Stall opted to pull back and put the colt on a different path.

He aimed for the Illinois Derby, a race controversially not granted any points toward Kentucky Derby qualification and therefore re-labeled this year as Preakness prep.

Departing's Illinois Derby victory made Laffit Pincay III, an analyst for HRTV, think of Bernardini, who swept into the 2006 Preakness after not running in the Derby and won by more than five lengths.

"I'm not saying the potential is the same," Pincay said. "But if you watch Bernardini in the Withers and Departing in the Illinois Derby, you can see the same sort of theme.

"We just don't know how good Departing can be. Orb seems to be ahead of everyone and growing at a faster pace, but we don't how much Departing is going to step up after four weeks off."